


A Moment of Hesitation

by angleton



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 14:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6859252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angleton/pseuds/angleton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very short story about fear, hesitation and self-doubt. Set some time after the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment of Hesitation

Judy would be lying if she said that she was never afraid. Throughout her life plenty of things scared her. There was the ire of her parents when she did something she wasn't supposed to do, and there were schoolyard bullies. The Police Academy introduced new fears: sparring with her classmates, an honest mistake of each of them could send a rabbit like her to a hospital; not to mention the exercises with the rhino close quarters combat instructor, the largest mammal Judy had seen in person at that time. There were less physical fears: of failing to meet the expectations set for a police cadet, of being on her own in the largest city in the world for the very first time, of standing up to her superiors when she thought she was right. There was the visceral terror of finding herself on the wrong end of a gun held in less than friendly paws.

But Judy had once read a phrase that resonated with her on a very deep level: “The only time a person can be brave is when they are afraid”. So she decided to be brave, and lived up to it, and had the scars to prove it. Pale ones from her school years; and other, much fresher ones. And little by little her fear — not disappeared, but faded into background, one signal among a multitude to which you pay attention, but which you don't allow to take the driver's seat.

The only mammal that could still break Judy's fear out of its permitted place was her Police Chief. Definitely it was not the issue of the bunny's size. It was not the fact that Judy's career was in Chief's paws: soon enough Judy found out that if you proved yourself and pulled your weight around the First Precinct you had nothing to be scared of in that regard. Neither it was the realization (Judy no longer being the naive bushy-tailed bunny she once had been) that you don't become the de facto leader of the entire Zootopia police force just by being good at arresting criminals: you need to be able to play at politics and at public relations, and to know when and how to bend the rules, and to cooperate with the less law-abiding citizens if it meant peace over chaos for the city. What made her nose twitch, for lack of a better word, Judy called “presence”. She was certain of one thing: in the days of the past the Chief never played the good cop part of the good cop & bad cop routine.

And all these thoughts were obviously not helping Judy's resolve while she was walking towards the Chief's office, with nothing less than a very personal request. Possibly these thoughts were the reason why she paused before knocking on the door with the words “Chief Hopps” stencilled on it. Paused long enough for her sensitive ears to pick up voices on the other side. Honor student of her Academy class, Officer Judy Midgarden, named after the first police officer of her species, never consciously intended to eavesdrop on her boss, but presented with an opportunity, she just could not help herself.

***

“You look tired.”

“Do I? I have a pile of paperwork to review that I literally can hide behind, ears and all, and that is only what is due this week. The latest training exercise proved that my SWAT team cannot apprehend a lone lion in a desert. The City Hall is up my tail about that ‘scandal’ ZNN ‘uncovered’ about ‘size profiling’.” The younger Judy could actually hear quotation marks around the older one's words. “And I have to shoehorn a dozen precincts into a budget that would have been called frugal for half that number. So why, yes, I do look tired.”

The reply that Judy didn't catch had a questioning inflection.

“Him? You know, an incident almost happened on the Security Council meeting this Tuesday, when the Chief of Precinct One almost jumped the bones of the ZBI Director right on the conference table. That red fox is just too hot in a suit and tie. And also because it was the nearest I had been to my husband in a month!”

“Don't tell me...”

“Of course we did, right afterwards. But sneaking into an empty office is not how I had imagined sex in my married life to be! I miss the time when we could finish our shift and spend the day off in my bed, getting up only to order delivery. Have I told you about that time Nick didn't bother to put on anything beside a towel to answer the door? It didn't hide his manhood all that well, the poor ocelot girl had trouble keeping her eyes from straying. When she noticed me watching she blushed so hard we could see it through her fur!”

The eavesdropping bunny could empathize with the delivery girl really well, her own fur not doing much better job at the moment. There was a short laughter behind the door. “That poor thing. But imagine what kind of an example you would be setting for your children if you two kept on playing exhibitionists to innocent bystanders!”

“I'm afraid we are not setting much of an example at all, with how little time we spend home. You know what my oldest said to the housekeeper about me after I returned from a week-long work trip? ‘Who is this scary lady?’! He was just being a snarky teenager, but it actually hurt me. I really am in their lives not nearly as much as they deserve. Do you... do you think I am a bad mother?”

“Relax, Judy. A bad mother would never ask that question in the first place.”

“I guess you are right. I guess I simply am... overwhelmed. Sometimes it feels like two frontlines, at home and here, and I am losing grounds on both of them. We catch one robber, and another takes his place. We arrest a drug dealer and two spring up. It was not that obvious on the ground, when I was just a detective, but now, with all the cases before me at once... Is there a magical well? A Fountain of Youth that decided ‘screw youth, I am going to gift the world with criminals’? Long time ago somebody I respect very much told me that the world had always been broken. I'm... I'm afraid that he was right...”

“Are you done with your two minutes of self-pity?” Despite the words, other person's tone was not irritated, but mildly amused. “Let me use your computer real quick.” Sound of typing reached the young officer's ears. “‘Crime... rate... statistics...’ See this ‘violent crimes’ section? See how fast the line falls in the chart ‘During ZPD under Chief Hopps’? As our common friend would say, you are just a dumb bunny...”

***

Stepping very softly, Officer Judy Midgarden backtracked away from the door which remained unknocked on. The news that two police officers, with the highest and the second highest number of solved cases this year, would like to request a simultaneous month long vacation (for the wedding and the subsequent honeymoon) could be brought to the Chief's attention a little later.

* * *

Brief historical reference

ZBI is Zootopia Bureau of Investigations. Founded soon after the Nighthowlers Scandal, it was ostensibly created to deal with illegal activities that fell outside the scope of any single police precinct, such as organized crime families and drug distribution networks. However, the real purpose of ZBI was to quietly look into potential cases of corruption and conspiracy in government, law enforcement and big business. The first Director of ZBI kept close tabs on the pair that exposed the former Mayor Bellwether, and, as soon as Hopps was promoted to the point of no longer requiring a partner, snatched Nicholas Wilde from ZPD and put him on the career fast track; that track lead Wilde to taking her place after her eventual retirement. To this day the identity of the first Director is not publicly known beyond the gender and the single-letter codename.


End file.
